Virtual reality (VR) deals with purely digital, virtual environments. Generally speaking, the goal of VR is total user immersion. Typically, VR solutions attempt to obscure a user's physical surroundings such that only VR-generated graphics are visible to that user, usually via a head-mounted device (HMD) or the like.
Augmented reality (AR) may also use HMDs. But, in contrast with VR, AR overlays digital entities (e.g., characters, text, hyperlinks, images, graphics, etc.) onto the user's actual physical environment. Similar to VR, AR technology also enables digital entities to be provided to a user wearing a heads-up display (HUD). But, in the case of AR, those digital entities are displayed in combination with physical objects present in the user's field of view.
In mixed reality (MR), an HMD may also exhibit an awareness of the user's physical environment, but it may further allow digital entities to interact with that environment and vice-versa. For example, MR technology may enable a user to have a conversation (or any other form of interaction) with a holographic image of a person (or any other a digital entity) displayed on top of a four-legged table (or any other physical object) in front of the user.
As the inventors hereof have discovered, however, switching between these various operation modes with the same hardware is not yet possible because the same HMD device cannot provide both a fully immersive VR experience and a true MR experience. For example, it is not possible for a conventional HMD device to obscure the outside environment within a VR application, and thereafter provide visibility to that physical environment in response to the triggering of an AR/MR application. Moreover, in any of these operational modes, digital entities tend to wash out in certain environments (e.g., a bright sunny day).